Monday, April 23, 2018

Students Make Voices Heard Again - As Communities Around The Country Pass Stricter Gun Laws

Students packed into New York's Washington Square to make their voices heard again - this time for an anti-gun vote in the November midterms.

Not to be denied their first amendment rights, thousands of students staged another walkout and mass protest Friday in schools across the country - even as assorted communities are taking matters into their own hands re: gun laws. Here in Colorado, students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland FL also joined Columbine students to rally Thursday night in Clement Park near Columbine High for a get out the vote message, urging all those of voting age to get signed up. As one of the kids said: "The only thing a gun obsessed politician fears is a vote against him or her."

Bingo! He's nailed it. The guntard politicos only fear being displaced from their pseudo reigns. Below is one of the activist Columbine kids:
This first ever "Vote for our lives rally" drew nearly 500 in Littleton and many thousands more around the nation and preceded the Friday student protests-walkouts, which were tied to the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. As if to punctuate student concerns a shooting at Forest High School in Ocala, FL left a 17-year old student injured. Fortunately for those students, the perp misfit (Sky Bouche) wasn't wielding an AK -47, Bushmaster.223, or AR-15. Unfortunately, for 4 slain Waffle House patrons in Tennessee, the degenerate that fired into that establishment did pack an AR. But the dumb gunnies still insist "more people are killed each year by fists than guns", yeah right, and pigs fly upside down.

Well, hardly if so many millions of assault type rifles are out there, as well as over 300,000 bump stocks which can easily convert any semi-automatic into an effective automatic (and we saw what that could do last year at the Las Vegas massacre).

So now assorted localities are taking matters into their on hands. As reported in the WSJ on Friday (p. A6) Deerfield, IL has now "unanimously passed an assault weapons ban". The ban will mandate that all owners of such weapons - residents turn them in by a specific deadline. Failure to do so will result in "violators being fined as much as $1,000 a day from the point the law take effect". Thus, if any violator delays ten days ditching their AR after the law is enabled, he or she will owe a nice tidy sum of $10,000.

Meanwhile, the city council in Lincoln, Nebraska and the Maryland General Assembly (MD already has an assault weapons ban that has been tested under the 2nd amendment and been preserved) voted to ban all bump stocks. Then in Coral Springs, FL there is a major push to limit the sale and transfer of large capacity magazines in the city. In addition, Coral Springs, along with two other municipalities is suing the state to be able to do so. (Many states, like Florida, for some idiotic reason prohibit municipalities from drawing up their own legislation.)Then there is Boulder, CO whose city council has approved an ordinance that would ban the sale and possession of any assault weapons in the city, Infraction may result in a long jail term, possibly up to 2 years. Predictably, on Saturday a bunch of NRA- backed losers came out to squeal ...errr, protest, about the ordinance - barking the usual false "Nazi" comparisons - which any dumbo that's studied the actual history of the Third Reich knows aren't true, and carrying fake and real AR-15 rifles as they marched. One bozo quoted in The Sunday Denver Post (p. 2B) whined:"This demonstration is because of the extremes that the Boulder City Council is going to. If they weren't I wouldn't be here."Aww. . .boo hoo hoo. This turkey actually believes he has a 2nd amendment right to own an AR. Newsflash, he doesn't. He needs to process the words of conservo pundit Joe Scarborough from two months ago:"If you want to make the argument that the Supreme Court should protect your rights to have military style weapons, that's legitimate. But if you say it is your God-given constitutional right to have an AR-15 that is not what the second amendment says. And it's not what Justice Scalia says or the Supreme Court says."

If that Boulder assault weapon ordinance protester doesn't like the ordinance perhaps he needs to move to Texas or Kansas and out of the "People's Republic Of Boulder".The beauty of all these local actions is there is very little the gunnies (perhaps other than in FL) can do to thwart them. We already know as I've stated at least a half dozen times before, that assault weapons are not protected under the 2nd amendment. This was in the famous 2008 SC case District of Columbia vs. Heller:http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

The majority opinion was written by arch-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia who - while upholding the right to own arms - adamantly asserted that those weapons "most useful in military service" fall outside the scope of the 2nd amendment.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal ("Ban On Military -Style Rifles Upheld", April 7-8, p. A3) notes that earlier SC ruling was once again upheld in a Massachusetts . And I am sure it will be upheld in the more recent Deerfield IL, Boulder CO, etc cases too - for the same reasons.

As federal judge William G. Young wrote in the MA ruling:"The AR-15 and its analogs - black, semi-automatic rifles with pistol grips and other military features - are simply not weapons within the individual constitutional right to bear arms."

The kids from Parkland and around the nation are now having an effect, with a powerful energy to reclaim gun sanity. That sanity underscores that there is a higher freedom to live and let live than to be suddenly cut down in a hail of assault rifle bullets as those people at the Waffle House were early yesterday.

The beauty is that the gunnies and guntards will not be able to stop them, or stop the movement now in motion and gaining more steam every day. And that is irrespective of how many photo-shopped images of David Hogg with Hitler, or in a Nazi uniform, they put up on their stupid blogs.

About Me

Specialized in space physics and solar physics, developed first astronomy curriculum for Caribbean secondary schools, has written thirteen books - the most recent:Fundamentals of Solar Physics. Also: Modern Physics: Notes, Problems and Solutions;:'Beyond Atheism, Beyond God', Astronomy & Astrophysics: Notes, Problems and Solutions', 'Physics Notes for Advanced Level&#39, Mathematical Excursions in Brane Space, Selected Analyses in Solar Flare Plasma Dynamics; and 'A History of Caribbean Secondary School Astronomy'. It details the background to my development and implementation of the first ever astronomy curriculum for secondary schools in the Caribbean.